Finishing up a valve job on this beast. Made it breathe fire before I left work tonight. It's not a 426 Hemi, but it's close (I think that came a year or two later). Dodge has a long history of performance minded production vehicles.

Just finished this one today. It's a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray split window with a 327 and a two speed Power Glide transmission. The story I got was that it had been a show car at one time, which was evident from all the parts that had been chromed, but after being stored in a garage for the last 38 years, all that chrome is in pretty bad shape. The paint is in bad shape as well. It's going to take some and TLC to get this one back to show quality. Actually, the new owner bought it for his wife. Now they own two classic Corvettes and two Toyotas.

Classic lines

The coveted split rear window.

I did a tune up which is made more difficult by all that chrome shielding covering the distributor and wires. The wires drop down the back of the engine and come up to the plugs from underneath The front plug wires thread up through the motor mounts.

Look at those two tiny air cleaner snorkles drawing hot air right from the radiator. I don't know how they expected the engine to breathe.

The interior is in good shape, but that new car smell is long gone and was replaced by 38 years of storage stagnation.

Vertically mounted radio. LOL

The majority of the work on this one was the brakes. All the drums were 1/8" oversize. All new hydraulics including hand bent steel lines. New shoes, springs and parking brake cables Much safer now.

That Dodge Polara is the bees knees......cool profession you have, especially to work on those hi dollar classics.

About 30 yrs ago I had a 1969 tri-power 427 w factory sidepipes, matching numbers with all the fiberglass seams intact (never hit). Bought it for $12,500 had it for about 5 yrs and sold it for $12,500.......prolly worth 60K nowadays

So one of my service writers used to work at a classic car shop and after they went out of business a lot of his old customers followed him to his new gig. Thats why I have such an inordinately high number of these vehicles that I work on. Plus I guess they figure the oldest guy in the shop should know how to fix them.

Today I began the process of evaluating this black beauty, A 1953 Cadillac DeVille convertible.
The customer has a lot of complaints, mostly regarding electrical issues and after looking at the wiring, I could see why.

Complete with the iconic Dagmar bumper (Google it).

Can you find the hidden gas cap? Just push the reflector button...

...and lift up the taillight housing.

One complaint is that the Autronic Eye system no longer works. It's supposed to automatically dim the headlights when it senses light from opposing traffic. This is called the amplifier.

I personally believe that it's an early version of the flux capacitor.

When was the last time you saw vacuum tubes used in a car?

I'm not sure when trip meters entered the scene, but here it is in 1953.

Most of the space behind the dashboard is occupied by that radio. I'm sure there's vacuum tubes in there as well. The radio has an automatic station search function that isn't working.

Miles of solid steel dashboard and not an airbag in sight. How did we ever survive without them?

This is the Autronic Eye light sensitive photocell mounted to the corner of the dashboard.

Well the Caddy is on hold for now waiting for customer approval. In the meantime, here's one that I worked on last year.

1974 De Tomaso Pantera

We sent out the leaking shocks to be rebuilt and had the wheels polished. I also addressed some brake line routing/chaffing issues, replaced the battery and serviced some fluids.

Remove the rear trunk liner...

...for more access to the engine and transaxle.

The power is provided by a Ford 351 Cleveland mated to a ZF transaxle

The interior is tight. I'm 6'1" and I would have to say it was the most uncomfortable test drive I've ever taken. The pedals are so close together, I was having a hard time managing them with my work boots.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I bought a pair of skinny Italian shoes.

The car was nicely restored, however the headlights didn't work due to a twofold problem. When it was restored and the interior was reassembled they wired the relay incorrectly. When I would turn on the headlights, all it would do was buzz under the dash.

It uses a DPDT relay with a clear housing cover like this one, which was handy for being able to identify the internal circuit flow for each pin.

Luckily there are pretty good resources available online with forums and enthusiasts where I was able to find a proper wiring diagram to get the electrical side of the problem figured out and wired correctly. However the headlights still wouldn't pop up, but at least there was no more buzzing and I could hear the motor running.

It turned out that the main drive gear in the lift motor was made of plastic and had become brittle and stripped out. The motor is used for a lot of other european applications (power windows) and a brass replacement is available. After making some adjustments to the travel limit switches, everything works like it should.